Vendée Ice Cream - Vive Glaces Maison!

French ice cream or "Glaces Maison" was something I discovered last year when visiting the Vendée .

Every ice cream parlour we visited had something exceptional to offer in their range of homemade ice cream. They had the most amazing range of colors and flavors - including electric blue Smurf ice cream!

Why am I talking about this now?

Well, I saw a tv travel show the other day that featured the part of France that we visited and they focused on the locally produced food. They mentioned the local meats, breads and cheeses but they forgot the ice cream! So to redress the balance here is a page listing some of my previous ice cream blog posts explaining why French ice cream is so fabulous .... Glaces Maison

PS. If you ever go to the Vendée be sure to visit the fabulous donjon at Bazoges-en-Pareds. It's like travelling back in time!

Glaces Maison - Pink Poppy Ice Cream

Today I can reveal 2 more amazing flavors of glaces maison that I came across in France.

The pale, delicately pink ice cream is pink poppy ice cream or as they say in France glace rose coquelicot.

The rich, almost salmon pink looking ice cream is guava, grapefruit and ylang-ylang or as it was labelled in the ice cream cabinet goyave pamplemousse ylang ylang.

What imagination the French have for ice cream making. Wonderful!

Anyone For Smurf Ice Cream?

Now that Halloween's over I can get back to my daydreaming about France and the wonderful French ice cream that I and my family encountered back in September.

Do you recall my blog post on 1 November? Well, it featured a photograph of some rather unusual ice creams. I challenged you to guess the flavors and promised to reveal all in due course.

Well, here is one of the answers. The flourescent blue ice cream is called Schtroumpf.

When I first saw this ice cream I was puzzled -what on earth was that? Some kind of fruit or vegetable? Nope! It's Smurf ice cream!

"Schtroumpf" is the word used in France for "The Smurfs" a series of cartoon characters made popular some years ago. They were little creatures all of a fluorescent blue color.

Don't ask me what it tastes like because I didn't have any - there were simply too many other tempting choices at that particular ice cream parlour. An excuse for going back there if ever there was one :-)

Ice Cream Good Enough For Johnny Depp Perhaps

French ice cream is a real treat - as you will have gathered from my enthusiasm in previous ice cream blog posts!

One of the things that stuck me most about the glaces maison I came across in France was the sheer variety of flavors. I have made a lot of ice cream in my life and tried many unusual ice cream recipes but there were several ice creams in France that I never imagined I would see! French ice cream makers (glace fabricants) are certainly not shy when it comes to being daring with ice cream recipes.

Here is a photograph I took of an ice cream parlour display cabinet on the Île de Ré (a beautiful little island off the coast of La Rochelle where even Johnny Depp has been spotted according to Wikipedia). You never know, he might just have tried one of these ice creams!

So ... can you guess the ice cream flavors?

All will be revealed in forthcoming ice cream blog posts - stay tuned!

French Ice Cream

Everyone knows there are different types of ice cream - from gelato to sorbets to custard base ice creams such as this definitive vanilla ice cream made with a real vanilla.

How about French ice cream? You may not think there's anything special about French ice cream but back in Edwardian England they did. On the last day that the great liner RMS Titanic ever saw daylight, the 1st class dining menu featured 'French Ice Cream' as a dessert. By contrast the 2nd class menu offered 'American Ice Cream'. The White Star Line chefs certainly thought there was something special about French ice cream. Read the full detail of why in an earlier blog post about Titanic ice cream.

If you've not tried French ice cream then you're in for a treat. I was recently in France (in the Vendée) and made a point of seeking out and trying as much locally made ice cream as I could. My family kindly helped me with this 'exercise' needless to say :-))

The verdict? Delicious! We tried ice creams from all different types of 'establishment' - waffles topped with vanilla ice cream in a small cafe in Vouvant, various ice cream cones in St Martin on the beautiful Île de Ré, ice cream sundaes in a small town, pavement cafe close to La Tranche Sur Mer ... the list goes on. Every time it was the same great experience. Every time we ordered vanilla ice cream it was real vanilla ice cream (you could see the tiny dark brown vanilla pod seeds in the ice cream). Every time we went to a new ice cream parlour we were stunned by the fabulous presentation of their glaces maison (homemade ice cream). Just look at this photo of almond ice cream decorated in almond flakes and caramel sauce!

I took lots of ice cream photographs whilst in France and hope to share them with you over the coming weeks and months via my ice cream blog and of course my ice cream recipes website.

French Ice Cream

Last weekend I cooked dinner for my family and some visiting friends. We all like Thai food so I opted to cook a Thai red chicken curry, served with rice, noodles and some fresh spinach. For dessert I served fresh fruit (blueberries, strawberries, chopped banana and peach) accompanied by homemade vanilla ice cream ... freshly made. It was so fresh that I had the ice cream maker churning whilst we were still eating the main course! It was delicious - honestly, I am not just saying that; everyone at the table echoed the feeling with my husband saying it was the best vanilla ice cream he had ever tasted! The recipe, which is on ice-cream-recipes.com of course (just follow the link above), is what I call a custard base ice cream and uses a real vanilla pod, fresh eggs, fresh milk, sugar and fresh cream. Essentially this is "French ice cream" because it requires a cooked egg custard.

Many years ago, using the term French ice cream inferred it was the best possible ice cream that you might find on a restaurant menu. One example is that of the RMS Titanic's first and second class dining menus - "French Ice Cream" for first class passengers and "American Ice Cream" for second class. Read my "Ice Cream & Class Distinction On The RMS Titanic" post from 2008.

Since those days of course the world has changed a lot and I doubt very much if the French only eat French ice cream! They definitely have a passion for ice cream though and I know this for 2 reasons ....

• Firstly, the statistics from ice-cream-recipes.com show a significant number of visitors from France, searching in French for the term "glaces maison" (homemade ice cream)
  
• Secondly, a friend who enjoys taking holidays in France - especially in and around Poitou Charentes - tells me that the ice cream there is always very, very good.

There are of course lots of other 'national' variations on ice cream such as Italian ice cream but that's a post for another day!